The site where 'Is this an appropriate question to ask' is on-topic is meta; but on meta.ux the minimum reputation to ask a question is 5. Compared to that, it seems silly that the main ux site allows posting at reputation 1... it causes situations like this question.

1 Answer
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I remember reading somewhere — don't remember where, at the moment — that the team chose five to ward off posts from people who weren't even remotely members of the community. In other words, spammers, people who are horribly lost and newbies who haven't yet learned the difference between meta sites and main site.

People will always occasionally post questions to the wrong place, as was done in the example you cited, but that sort of thing is really quite rare, so I'd say the system works (or at least isn't broken enough to justify a fix).

Don't underestimate confusion. Someone once posted a not-even-close-to-on-topic question at AskUbuntu because he had never heard of the OS, and just assumed that Ubuntu was a name someone made up as a less boring alternative to "AskJeremy" or "AskJohn." @Jon
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Pops♦Apr 25 '12 at 21:30

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@Jon: you'd think... But then you come here and see the daily questions from folks who thought they were on SO. I answered an email from someone recently who was trying to ask a question on Ask Ubuntu and being denied - he was trying to post it on the meta site. [Edit: oh, great - two AU anecdotes back-to-back. Other sites get confused users too! ]
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Shog9♦Apr 25 '12 at 21:30

I'd argue that if there was going to be a random outsider comment somewhere, I'd rather have it pollute a meta site than a main site.
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Myrddin EmrysApr 25 '12 at 21:33

@Shog9 maybe MSO is a different beast as it applies to all SE sites and is linked to all over the place. I don't think the same applies to the smaller SE and MSE sites.
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JonWApr 25 '12 at 21:34

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@MyrddinEmrys: you don't get to choose which one. The options are: "random crap on main site" and "random crap on both sites".
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Shog9♦Apr 25 '12 at 21:35

@Shog9: True, but odds are good that you'll get less random crap on the main site.
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Nicol BolasApr 25 '12 at 21:44

@Shog9 Isn't that the point of meta though - to provide a place where people can post questions about the main site. One of those questions being 'is it appropriate to ask a question about X'? That is 'random crap' on the main site, but it's perfectly on-topic on meta. But you can't ask on meta without enough rep.
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JonWApr 25 '12 at 21:47

@Jon: actually, those tend to be among the most useless questions a new user can ask. Just ask the question - if it's off-topic or inappropriate, then you'll find out quickly enough.
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Shog9♦Apr 25 '12 at 21:51

@Shog9 well I was concerned about meta filling up with posts like 'can I ask about Playstation here', 'can i ask about lightbulbs here' but then I realized that it's kind of the point of meta. but yes, it's better to ask a question that you're not sure is off-topic on the main site than to ask a question you know is off topic ("can I ask about X") instead.
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JonWApr 25 '12 at 21:59